Ted Grant

LPYS housing
rally gives lead to Labour

The Labour
Party Young Socialists are giving a fighting lead to the whole of the
labour movement, with their national housing rally in Manchester on
May 20th.

The Tories
are attacking the standards of the working class on all fronts—the
cost of living is going up while they try and keep wages down;
democratic union rights are being violated and now the Tories want to
take away the last refuge—a place to live without exorbitant rents.
The Tories are pushing through a bill to abolish subsidies and, with
the usual double-think and double-hypocrisy of the Tories, it is
being called the “Fair Rents” Bill.

That this
is a vicious and anti-working class piece of legislation, is proved
by the fact that subsidies to home-buyers will be continued. There
will be no means test or rebates for house-buyers, but a straight
subsidy, which, on average, is already far higher than that received
by council tenants. Surtax payers on a £40,000 mortgage over a 25
year period, paying £3,200 interest and £278 in the last year, will
get an income tax rebate of £2,414 (or roughly £46.40 a week) on
the first year.

Profit-making
activity

Subsidies
are continued for house-buyers not because the Tories are sentimental
about those sections of the working class, and middle class
particularly, who have been forced to buy a house to get a place to
live, but to drive even more people in sheer desperation to get into
debt and to scrimp and deprive themselves, in order to have the
illusion of owning a house; this is for the benefit of the landlords,
bankers, landowners and big building firms. Even before this savage
attack on council tenants, the price of houses has increased 52
percent in two years in Britain.

Rents will
be doubled by 1976. Even in the year ahead, in spite of the
government’s pretended limit on price increases of 5 percent, rent
increases will be 15 to 25 percent. For the first time since council
housing was introduced, it will become in many parts of the country,
a “profit making activity” and the profits will be taxed by the
Chancellor at the rate of 50 percent! In addition to the £100 per
head which will be taken from the pockets of most working class
families as a result of this Bill, there will be an increase in
rates, not only for council tenants, but for all tenants.

Nor will
private tenants benefit. Their rents will shoot up sky high, when
what was once the cheapest sector, council housing, becomes the
dearest. The price of housing will shoot to astronomical levels. It
is now virtually impossible for skilled workers to afford the price
of housing. As a consequence of this Bill, it will become impossible.

As Housing
Minister Amery explained when justifying the Bill in Parliament,
without such an Act, “by the middle of the decade, the
[subsidies]…will have risen from £350 million to £600 million.”
That is enough for the capitalists. Apparently this is an immense sum
to raise. But of course, the payment of over £15,000 million in
interest on the national debt last year, nearly five times as much as
was paid in subsidies, is taken for granted. (The national debt is
payment in interest for the last four wars waged by British
capitalism, beginning with the Crimean War).

In the last
war, the workers made payment in “blood, toil, tears and sweat”,
in the words of Churchill. Now, like Shylock demanding his pound of
flesh, the Tories are demanding more blood, more toil, more tears,
and more sweat.

£1,000
million to money-lenders

What are
these housing subsidies? Of every 100p paid in rent, 80p go to the
grasping money-lenders, mainly the banks as the interest is
guaranteed; 10p goes to the land-owners and approximately 4p for the
builders’ profits. Of every 100p paid by the tenant, 6p is the real
cost of housing. If money is required for upkeep and rebuilding, it
could be increased to say 10p in every 100p paid by the tenants now.
The bankers and money-lenders make over £1,000 million in interest
every year on council housing.

This is
what stands in the way of cheap housing and low rents. It is the
forces behind capitalism—the insatiable demand for rent, interest
and profit. In the housing debate in Parliament, unfortunately, the
Labour leaders as well as the Tories spoke as if this system was for
all time.

In the
discussion on housing, in Parliament and within the labour movement,
the most striking feature is the failure to point out to the working
people that the system of rent, interest and profit is not eternal.

In all the
countries where landlordism and capitalism have been abolished—in
Russia, China, Cuba and Eastern Europe—in spite of the totalitarian
system, and where bureaucratic dictatorship and inefficiency prevent
the maximum use of resources, rent still
remains only 5 percent of the workers’ wages.
Why? Because of the removal of the vested interests which stand in
the way of solving the housing problem at cheap rents.

We must
follow the example of our fellow workers in these countries and
nationalise, with minimum compensation on the basis of need, the
land, banks, insurance companies and big building firms, but under
workers’ control and trade union democracy.

There are
over 155,000 unemployed building workers at a time when many sections
of the workers have to put up with slum housing, yet Amery, with
crocodile tears, pointed to the plight of the private tenant in the
borough of Camden. Thus this Tory minister uses the scandal of high
rents for private tenants, not to introduce legislation to improve
their lot, but to try and bring council tenants to the same terrible
conditions.

The attack
on the seven million council tenants is an attack on 20 million
people directly, and in reality, an attack on the whole of the
working class. Cheap housing is possible—but not under this system.

The working
people have never gained anything without sacrifice and struggle;
that is why they must shrug off the lamentations of Crosland that...
“There are threats of extra-Parliamentary action on the Bill. There
is talk of defiance and non-implementation. No honourable members
should countenance unconstitutional action…”

Mass action

It was only
through extra-Parliamentary action by the workers of Glasgow, that
rent reforms were brought in during the First World War. It was only
mass action that resulted in large scale council house building. Mass
demonstrations and mass action, including industrial action, by
council and private tenants, can defeat the Tories and force a
withdrawal of the Bill.

The local
council elections, which resulted in the Tories, at local level,
being thrown out in most of the main industrial regions, was an
indication of the feelings of the working class. Labour councils
should take this as a starting point.

The example
of the LPYS should be taken up and a mass campaign organised to
defeat the Tory Bill. All
Labour councils should refuse to operate it and local Labour parties
should bring together tenants organisations and the trade unions into
a mass force, capable of bringing the Tories to their knees.